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Administration

Shaunaka Rishi Das

Director

Shaunaka Rishi Das is from Wexford, Ireland. He has been Director of the OCHS since its inception in 1997. Shaunaka maintains the vision and ethos of the Centre on behalf of the Board of Governors, and encourages the Centre’s continued growth and development in all spheres. He has overall responsibility for its fundraising, administration, and communication.

Professor Gavin Flood

Academic Director

Prof. Gavin Flood is from Brighton, England. Gavin is responsible for the existing academic programmes of the Centre and for developing new programmes. The Academic Director is the Centre’s contact person and link with the University’s Theology Faculty, Oriental Institute, other faculties, and other scholars of South Asian studies at Oxford. He lectures on Hinduism and other subjects as a member of the Theology Faculty, and offers tutorials for undergraduate and graduate students.

Professor Flood's main work has been on South Asian traditions, particularly Hindu Tantra, and he has research interests in sacred texts, phenomenology, asceticism, and theory and method in the study of religion. He has published papers in Religious Studies journals such as Religion and Numen and in Indological journals such as the Indo-Iranian Journal and the Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens. The books he has published are: Body and Cosmology in Kashmir Saivism (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1993); An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Beyond Phenomenology: Rethinking the Study of Religion (London: Cassell, 1999), The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and The Tantric Body (Tauris forthcoming 2005). He is the editor of The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) and general editor of the Routledge series 'Studies in Tantric Traditions.' His current research develops beyond India through re-visiting the idea of 'comparative religion' and in exploring the relation between self, text, and tradition across cultures.

Lal Krishna

Development Administrator

Lal Krishna is from Australia. Lal studied Linguistics at Deakin University, Melbourne, and has worked both as an editor and production manager for the publishing industry. He is skilled in database management, web development, and administration. Lal oversees the development of our ‘Friends and Funds’ programme, fund campaigns, Continuing Education online, database, website, and communications.

Dr Nicholas Sutton

Continuing Education Department Administrator

Dr Nicolas Sutton is from Birmingham, England. As Director for the Centre’s CE Dept. Nicolas is responsible for the development and accreditation of courses, teaching provision, assessment of course work, online provision, and publications. He also teaches and offers tutorials for students of our Hindu Studies Certificate Course.

Dr Nicholas Sutton obtained his BA Degree with First Class Honours from the Department of Theology at the University of Birmingham in 1991. He gained his Phd from Lancaster University in 1995, submitting a doctoral thesis on the religious teachings of the Mahabharata. From 1995 to 2001, Dr Sutton was Full Time Lecturer in Eastern Religions at Edge Hill University College and he currently lectures in Religious Studies for the Open University, and in Hinduism for the University of Nottingham. Dr Sutton has contributed a number of articles on the Hindu tradition to academic journals, as well as chapters in edited books. In 2000, his extensive work on epic theology entitled 'Religious Doctrines in the Mahabharata' was published by Motilal Benarsidass in Delhi. He is currently working on a translation and extended study of the Mahabharata's Moksha-dharma-parvan, and researching material for a book exploring the links between the Bhagavad Gita and the Mahabharata. His work has also brought him into close contact with the Hindu communities in the North of England where he worked with Preston College and the local temples in organising courses of study in Hindu scripture and Hindu religious practice.

Anuradha Dooney

Continuing Education Department

Anuradha Dooney was awarded her BA in Social Science, from University College Dublin, and her M.St. in the Study of Religion, from Oxford University. Her masters thesis was an exploration of faith development in the Vaishnava tradition. She is currently a Fellow of the OCHS, acting as a faculty member of the Continuing Education Department. Anuradha has been a tutor for courses in London, Birmingham, Oxford, Cambridge, and Leicester since 2003. She has acted as the principal curriculum writer for undergraduate degree courses granted by the University of Wales, Lampeter, courses taught in the UK and Belgium. She has also organised and run academic and interfaith workshops, seminars and conferences internationally. Anuradha is a respected lecturer and broadcaster.

Dr Rembert Lutjeharms

Librarian

Dr. Rembert Lutjeharms is from Brussels, Belgium. Rembert is the Librarian at the Centre, and as a member of our Academic Planning Committee also helps to organise lectures and seminars at the Centre.

He was awarded his BA and MA in Oriental Studies from the University of Ghent, Belgium, and successfully completed his D.Phil. in Theology at the University of Oxford in 2010, focusing on the theology of the sixteenth-century Caitanya Vaishvana poet and literary critic Kavikarnapura. His research interests are Sanskrit poetry and poetics, early Caitanya Vaisnava history, and Sanskrit hermeneutics.

Rembert has been teaching for our Hindu Studies Certificate Course since 2004 and is also an editor of the Journal of Hindu Studies, published by Oxford University Press.

Judit McFarland

Administrative Secretary , Book-keeper

Judit McFarland is from Pécs, Hungary. Judit has an MA in English Literature and Linguistics and has previously worked as an English teacher, and translator. Judit is the backbone of the Centre’s operations co-ordinating diaries, administration, services, filing, equipment, reception and most importantly, book-keeping